In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

11115 - Why Aadhaar cannot deliver anything it promises by Anupam Saraph - Economic Times

Future Designer, Professor, Thought Leader







Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India.

Apr 24, 2017, 12.02 AM IST

Aadhaar promises to remove duplicates and ghosts from government databases, deliver subsidies to beneficiaries, collect taxes, provide financial inclusion and eliminate corruption. Here is why it cannot deliver anything it promises.

Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India.

Promise 1: Removing Fraud and Duplicates
In a recent interview, Nandan Nilekani claimed: “Aadhaar was used to clean up the beneficiary list for government schemes. Using the same argument, if it’s linked, duplicate PANs will go away and tax evasion will reduce. The issue with driving licences is again their multiplicity. In all these cases, Aadhaar is being used to eliminate various kinds of fraud and misuse.”
Contrast this claim with the CAG report No 25 of 2016. The auditor observed in this report multiple LPG connections having the same Aadhaar number or same Bank account in the consumer database maintained by the OMCs. This highlighted that the use of Aadhaar did not eliminate multiple connections. It highlighted that beneficiaries also had access to multiple Aadhaar numbers.

In de-duplication, any two databases can be used for comparison with each other. The output of the comparison would be expected to be a list of records that matched and therefore deemed to be genuine, a list of records where the name matched but address did not and need verification, a list of records that are missing from one but present in the other and therefore deemed to have been excluded from one or likely to be fake in the other.

Promise 2: Delivering subsidy and benefits
Nilekani highlights that “Aadhaar played a big role in streamlining benefit delivery — LPG, kerosene, pensions, scholarships, etc — which proved to be very successful”.
The government’s data on PDS from Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Andhra and Telangana highlight 38-80% beneficiaries have been deprived of rations. The CAG has observed that more than 4.53 crore domestic LPG consumers could not avail of subsidised cylinders during 2015-16.

Aadhaar actually adds a denial layer through multiple indifferent private parties. Subsidy and benefit delivery is now at the mercy of mobile App developers, iSprit, telecom companies, electricity utilities, the Authentication Service Agencies, the UIDAI and sometimes banking correspondents and the NPCI. Without them the transactions may never happen.
It therefore makes the delivery of benefits and entitlements anything but streamlined or successful.

Promise 3: Collecting Taxes, preventing tax evasion, widening the tax net
Mukul Rohatgi, Attorney General reportedly told the Supreme Court “We have found a number of PAN cards being used to divert funds to shell companies. To prevent this, the only option is to make Aadhaar card mandatory.”
The Minister for State in the Ministry of Finance had informed the Rajya Sabha on 31st March 2007 that the number of persons having duplicate PANs in 13.1 lakhs. This is just about 4 percent of those who filed returns in 2012-13. On 22nd April 2016 the cancelled PAN cards were 11,56,894.
The Minister explained that duplicate PAN cards were allotted due to incorrect data entry, multiple applications by the same person with varying particulars and allotment both on the basis of PAN application and the return of income. Clearly Aadhaar has played no role in identifying duplicates.
The Aadhaar database has entries to ghosts and duplicates including those issued in the name of gods, animals and plants. As already highlighted, the use of the Aadhaar database that has never been cleaned of duplicates and ghosts to create new PAN cards will end up including ghosts in the new database and facilitate the very tax evasion that the government wishes to avoid.

Promise 4: Financial inclusion
Nandan Nilekani describes the “whats-app” moment of Indian banking where “One can visualise a future where every adult Indian has an Aadhaar number, a smartphone and a bank account. Already over 280 million Indian residents have an Aadhaar-linked bank account.”
The Crime Branch of Delhi Police, registered a FIR under sections 409, 419, 120B of the Indian Penal Code and section 66 and 66C of the Information Technology Act against Axis Bank, e-Mudra for actually doing presence less transactions. According to the UIDAI, they used a previously stored biometric to authenticate transactions in the absence of a person. This indicates that Aadhaar banking makes individuals completely vulnerable to frauds.
Raising concerns that Jan Dhan accounts, opened with Aadhaar as the sole KYC, can be misused by “money mules”, RBI had warned in May 2016 they are “very vulnerable” to frauds.
RBI Deputy Governor S.S.Mundra had said that third parties can be used to launder the proceeds of fraud schemes (such as phishing and identity theft) by criminals who gain illegal access to deposit accounts by recruiting them as “money mules”. True to the warnings, the Jan Dhan bank accounts, which are the tip of the iceberg in terms of bank accounts opened with Aadhaar as the sole KYC, had a rise Rs 32,000 crore in Jan Dhan deposits within two weeks of demonetisation. This demonstrated that Aadhaar banking aids criminal activities and money laundering.

Promise 5: Eliminating corruption
Social activist Nikhil Dey says, “The government claims that the Aadhaar card will ensure higher efficiency, greater inclusiveness, and a reduction in corruption. But in Rajasthan, what we are getting are more inefficiency, more exclusion, and more corruption.
In Tonk district, for instance, 80% of the rightful beneficiaries were turned away due to biometric-related issues. In other districts, the inefficiency rate was 60%. Aadhaar neither prevents leakages of ration, particularly from the godown to shops, nor does it deter corruption”. Reetika Khera and Anumeha Yadav have highlighted the corruption in Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (ABBA) leading to siphoning off of the rations far more easily on count of Aadhaar.
Cobrapost and CNN Network 18 have exposed that for a cost between Rs 500 to Rs 2500, “Aadhaar officers” agreed to make Aadhar Cards for applicants without any proof of identification or proof of address. They also demonstrated that it was possible to make multiple Aadhaar enrolments and even multiple cards.
The CAG has already pointed out that the “savings” attributed to Aadhaar are in fact denial of subsidy to more than 4.53 crore domestic LPG consumers. The CAG also found consumers with multiple connections who received subsidy on more than 12 cylinders as well as an advance payment on registration.
A database of unverified and unaudited numbers cannot play any role to weed out corruption. It is corruption to use these numbers to claim they weed out corruption.
The continued use of Aadhaar is contempt of the orders of the Supreme Court when the information about an individual obtained by the Unique Identification Authority of India is used for purposes not permitted by the court.


DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETtech.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETtech.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.

Dr. Anupam Saraph is a renowned expert in governance of complex systems and advises governments and businesses across the world.